


Circuit

by Fireflower34



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alicization: War of Underworld, Character Death, Gen, I feel like there should be more tags, Minor Character Death, Oneshot, Post-War, Stream of Consciousness, War, dont wanna tag them all just in case, fics, filling in canon gaps with made-up lore and self-indulgent angst, i dont know what im doing, i have an obsession with writing war settings, i think, its another one of those, so no actual character interactions, tell me if i need to add more tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fireflower34/pseuds/Fireflower34
Summary: History repeats itself, and rarely is it pleasant
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Circuit

**Author's Note:**

> Helloooo again  
> im just gonna.... drop this here   
> there are so many wips in my docs and even more ideas and hhhhhh gods i wish i had the time to write them all  
> If i didn't follow canon its because i forgot. Also. because the integrity knight's numbers go higher than the number of them there are, i threw some names together to fill in the ones we dont know. So that was fun  
> I was going to start a completely different fanfic than what this ended up as, but since it no longer fit with what i was trying to do, i decided to just cut it off and post it alone  
> hope its not too terrible

War is not something unfamiliar to Bercouli

He had been present since the beginning as Administrator’s champion. Set out on her behalf to drive back the Dark Territory so she could claim land and set boundaries beyond Centoria. Well, it wasn’t called Centoria then, just the first spark of civilization in an untouchable world. 

A spark that had grown abnormally fast.

It was a steady flame by the time Bercouli had started taking routine patrols along the borders, and a full blown wildfire by the time Administrator decided she’d need more than one knight to defend a country of its size.

Fanatio was Two. She was a bright and determined recruit that quickly grew into a hardened warrior with a blade faster than the eye could see. With the power behind Bercouli’s strikes and the speed of Fanatio’s they were more than enough to beat back the Dark even further. There was a fleeting period of time, where victories were great and losses nonexistent, that the two of them could afford to take days without missions and glide through the skies without purpose or walk the market streets unarmed and marvel at the flourishing country they called home. 

A fleeting period of time, where the Dark Territory was licking their wounds.

And then came back stronger than ever. 

They had sharper weapons and greater firepower and so, so many more numbers. Wave after wave after wave would crash down upon them until Bercouli couldn’t tell which way was North and which was South. The first battle was a loss. The second scraped a win by a blade’s edge. The third and fourth were devastating, but neither quite as bad as the fifth.

If the era before had been for leisure, then this was the era Administrator recruited knight after knight after knight in a frenzy to win the war as quickly as possible. Shema was the third, Io was the fourth, Vernac was the fifth, and Ethal was the sixth. Teenagers and adults of varying skill sets and personalities thrown into the fray and directed towards Bercouli as their commander. It was hectic to say the least, training new recruits when most of the ‘training’ had to be during real-time experiences. They managed, somehow. Coaxed Ethal’s scimitars to glow brighter and pushed Io’s dagger to fly straighter and enhanced Vernac’s agility and conditioned Shema’s hand-to-hand to take full advantage of her gauntlets.

They managed. But Bercouli knew better than to think it was enough

Vernac was the first to fall, one wrong step and it sprung a TNT trap that set the land ablaze for days

Shema was next. Stabbed in the back with a poisoned sword and was found by the rest of them too late.

Her gauntlets were passed on to Synthesis Six. Perocita

Ethal was captured and executed on a stealth mission gone wrong

Deusolbert was brought in for long-ranged support.

Io was sniped by an arrow in a ravine battle

Thorne and Marciel were added to fill the gaps. 

Fanatio stayed faithful (and alive, Thank Stacia) by his side as knights were trained, killed, and replaced. A hellish cycle that Bercouli would hope never to live again. Watching the blade rush towards Ethal’s neck as fear shone bright in his eyes, holding Shema as she gasped her last words over the sounds of battle that threatened to drown her out, standing cold and still at funerals Administrator couldn’t be bothered to hold because clearly her knights were nothing more than tools for her to maintain complete control over the world  _ they _ protected-

Bercouli is not unfamiliar with war, but he had hoped such an act would somehow never repeat itself

Yet, as predicted, centuries later, with the fourteen of them that survived, he stood once again in front of the same cracking gate with the same old sword at his waist and the same partner-in-battle he had fought beside for the past two hundred years.

(There were thirty-one of them there was supposed to be thirty-one of them but Io, Ethal, Shema, Vernac, Pero, Cara, Thorne, Yeirath, Marci, Entokia, Urasil and so so many more had been lost and mourned and added to the monument in the back of the library. He’ll never forgive Administrator for treating them like her weapons to be used and discarded).

(He’ll never forgive himself either, for sending them to their deaths)

Fourteen was  _ such a tiny number. _ This generation’s knights had been precautionary, a failsafe for if  _ (if, she had said with that smirk as if she could rewrite the laws of the universe with a single hand) _ the Dark Territory rose again. They hadn’t lived the war One, Two, and Seven had. They weren’t  _ weak _ by any means, but an era of peace meant an era where a sword wasn’t the most vital possession you could have, when the night wasn’t a both a weapon and a weakness, where there was no need to drill yourself over and over and over with the knowledge that the hair’s-width separating a miss and a strike could be the single thing standing between a comrade and death, between the death of a hundred innocents and a nation that wanted nothing but blood and land (even then they had never fought for Administrator). 

This generation had Renly, Dakira, Jies, Scheta, Giro, Hobren, Alice, Eldrie, Fizel, Linel. 

Capable. Competent. Adept. Resourceful. Sensible. Strategic. Gifted. 

Bercouli could list all the words in the world, and still be unable to express how unprepared they were for another war that may as well dwarf the first in comparison.

Scheta was the only one that had any kind of experience, having been recruited in the very end during the final push for victory. She was quiet and stoic and innocent and she knew screams and gore and corpses that locked something away inside of her with a key that no longer existed. But even then the front lines had been far from her sight. 

This time, they’ll be the ones leading the charge. 

There’s a terrible kind of deja vu to standing in the same ravine as Io was shot - as Ethal was executed, as Thorne was burned alive - with yet another team of young and determined knights about to find out how impossible it is to be ready for the horror that awaited them. War was a slow, gruesome affair. A chess game with no turns and no rules and insurmountable consequences. A chain of late-night strategy meetings and forsaking emotion for logic and drawing your sword even when fighting had long since lost its appeal and the thrill of a victory had faded to nothing. 

And still he draws it anyway.

There’s another legion at his back and another army to his front and only one will still be standing at the end of the night so  _ hell _ if he won’t do everything in his power to make it them (again).

War is not familiar to Renly, Dakira, Jies, Giro, Hobren, Alice, Eldrie, Fizel, or Linel. 

But in the next couple weeks, it will be.

(That’s the promise in the air as the gate crumbles in a brilliant flash of violet and with it, shatters the final era of peace)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for readingg


End file.
